general confession, preparatory to his receiving the sacrament. Certain
reparations and expiations were to be previously made; and father
Poujet, with all his logic and adroitness, had some difficulty in
obtaining them. The first sacrifice required of him was, that he should
abandon the proceeds of an edition of his tales, then publishing under
his direction in Holland; the publication of them in France having been
prohibited since 1677. He readily consented for himself; but wished to
make over the profits to the poor, as more consonant with humanity, and
more grateful in the eyes of God, than yielding them to a griping rogue
of a Dutch publisher. The priest convinced him that "the wages of sin"
could not with propriety be applied to the service of God and of
charity. He gave up the point; and such was the satisfaction caused by
his conversion at court, that a sum, equal to what he should have
received for his tales, was sent to him in the name of the young duke of
Burgundy, "who thought it unreasonable that La Fontaine should be the
poorer for having done his duty." According to some accounts, this would
appear to be the same donation of fifty louis already mentioned; and it
is most probable. The devotees of the court were much more likely to
reward the conversion than relieve the distress of La Fontaine, at a
time when the tone was given by père la Chaise and madame de Maintenon.
He was next required to consign to the flames, with his own hands, a
manuscript opera, which he intended to have performed. The sacrifice was
not consented to without some qualms of authorship, even by La Fontaine.
The last condition was the hardest of all,--that he should ask pardon of
God and the church, _publicly_, for having scandalised both in the
publication of his tales. La Fontaine, with all his indolence and
simplicity, and enfeebled as he was by sickness and age, resisted the
demand of a public reparation, in spite of all the arguments and
artifices of the confessor. It was agreed between them to appeal to the
sorbonne. A deputation of three doctors accordingly waited on La
Fontaine, and took part, as might be anticipated, with the confessor.
They argued and disputed, but the poet still held out against making
satisfaction publicly. An old nurse, who attended him, seeing the
pitiless zeal with which they fatigued and teased the poor poet, said to
them. "Don't torment him, my reverend fathers; it is not ill-will in
him, but stupidity, poor soul; and God Almighty will not have the heart
to damn him for it." They, however, did persevere, and gained their
point. A deputation from the academy was called in to witness La
Fontaine's public reparation, given as follows by Nicéron:--"It is but
too public and notorious that I have had the misfortune to compose a
book of infamous tales. In composing it I had no idea of the work being
so pernicious as it proves to be. My eyes have been opened, and I
confess that it is an abominable book: I am most sorry that I ever wrote
and published it; and I ask pardon of God and the church for having done
so. I wish the work had never proceeded from my pen, and it were in my
power wholly to suppress it. I promise solemnly, in the presence of my
God, whom, though unworthy, I am going to receive, that I will never
contribute to the impression or circulation of it: and I renounce, now
and for ever, all profit from an edition which I unfortunately consented
should be given in Holland."
There appears no reasonable doubt of a public reparation of some sort
having been made by La Fontaine; but that above cited differs so
entirely from his turn of thought and style as to suggest a suspicion of
its having been fabricated or dictated to him. The report of his death
was circulated with that of his conversion; and Linière, a satirical
poet of the day, wrote the following epigram upon him and Pelisson, who
had died shortly before:--
"Je ne jugerai de ma vie
D'un homme avant qu'il soit éteint,--
Pelisson est mort en impie,
Et La Fontaine comme un saint."
There was, however, nothing very surprising either in Pelisson dying
like a sinner, or La Fontaine like a saint. The former, from being a
huguenot, became a convert, and a maker of converts, a pensioned abbe, a
courtier, an author of "Prayers at Mass," "Amatory Verses to Olympia,"
"a Treatise on the Eucharist;" there was nothing extraordinary or
inconsistent in such a man dying, as he did, "unsacramented." It was
equally within the range of probability that La Fontaine, never an
infidel, always tractable and simple, and now beset on his bed of
sickness by learned and skilful disputants, should make so devout and
edifying an end. It should not be omitted that his conversion made the
fortune of father Poujet: he immediately became a fashionable confessor,
or spiritual director, and obtained church preferment.
The epigrammatist was mistaken in La Fontaine's death. He lived about
two years more, in the house of madame d'Hervart; and, in spite of his
vow, is supposed to have written some more tales; among them the tale
entitled "La Clochette." This relapse is said to be alluded to in the
prologue cited by Moreri:--
"O combien l'homme est inconstant, divers,
Foible, leger, tenant mal sa parole:
J'aurais juré-même, en assez beaux vers,
De renoncer à tout conte frivole,
Et quand juré--c'est ce qui me confond--
Depuis deux jours j'ai fait cette promesse,--
Puis fiez vous à rimeur qui répond
D'un seul moment," &c.
His mind, however, seems to have been deeply tinged with devotion, from
his illness, in 1693, to his death, in 1695. He began to translate the
church hymns; and read, at the first meeting of the academy which he
attended after his illness, a translation of the "Dies Iræ," with more
advantage to his reputation as a catholic than as a poet. His talent
seems now to have given way to age, infirmity, and the penances which he
appears to have imposed upon himself.
Lulli, who died a few years before, did public penance, like La
Fontaine, but with an after-thought worthy of the cunning Florentine. He
burned, at the request of his confessor, the music of a new unperformed
opera. A prince having asked him, a few days after, how he could be so
silly as to destroy charming music at the desire of a drivelling
jansenist, he replied, "Hush, hush, monseigneur; I knew what I did; I
have another copy." He, however, had a relapse, did penance in sackcloth
and ashes, and died, with a halter round his neck, singing the hymn,
"Sinner, thou must die," with tears of remorse and agony.
La Fontaine died in 1695, and in the seventy-fourth year of his age.
Upon undressing his body, after death, it was found that he mortified
himself in a shirt of sackcloth. The apartment in which he lived and
died, at the house of madame d'Hervart, was visited as an interesting
object for several years after.
The chief fault of La Fontaine is that he had but one tone. Madame de
Sévigné, who judged men of genius with the presumption of a court lady
dictating to her coterie, pronounces him wretched when he is anything
but a fabulist. "I should like," said she, in one of her letters, "to
attempt a fable, for the express purpose of showing La Fontaine the
misery of forcing one's talent out of its sphere; and what bad music is
produced by the foolish wish to sing in every tone."
La Fontaine had one tone in which he was pre-eminent; but sang in more
than one without producing bad music. The poem of "Adonis" has great
beauty. It should be regarded, he says, only as an idyl; and it will,
undoubtedly, be found one of the most beautiful of that class. But it
had the further merit of being the first accomplished specimen of heroic
verse in France; for Boileau had not yet given his "Lutrin." The
mythological tale of "Psyche and Cupid," in which prose and verse
alternate and relieve each other, continues to be read, notwithstanding
the modern unpopularity of the divinities of the Pantheon. He is
indebted to Apuleius, but only for the fable and main incident: the
episodes, description, and manner of narrating ("_manière de conter_,"
as he calls it), are his own. The celebrated and forgotten romance of
"Astrea" was one of the books which La Fontaine read with pleasure; and
he is said to have derived from it that tone of pastoral sentiment and
imagery which is one of the charms of "Psyche" and of some of his other
pieces. It is probable, however, that he is under lighter obligations
both to Apuleius and the "Astrea" than to the duchess of Bouillon, to
whom he dedicated his tale. Living at the time in her intimate society,
it was composed by him, under her inspiration, in that style of gaiety,
tenderness, gallantry, and refinement, which he has combined with so
much of simplicity and fancy. The faults of this mythological, or,
according to some, allegorical tale, as it is treated by La Fontaine,
are its description of Versailles, some fatiguing digressions, and a
certain indolent voluptuary languor. The result is, occasionally, that
most fatal of all wants--the want of interest.
La Fontaine's dramatic pieces have a manifest affinity to his genius,
but none whatever to the genius of the drama. Some of his elegies,
compliments, anacreontics, and other lesser pieces, are worthy of him;
others so indifferent as to render their genuineness doubtful. His poem
on St. Malch was approved by the lyric poet Rousseau; and this is its
highest distinction. His poem on Jesuit's Bark is universally condemned.
It is only in his fables and tales that one is to look for the supremacy
of La Fontaine. As a fabulist he has surpassed all who preceded him, and
has never been approached by his successors. It is charged upon him that
he invented nothing; that he but translated, imitated, or versified
Æsop, Phædrus, Petronius, Rabelais, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Machiavelli,
the hundred novels of Cinthio, the Heptameron of the queen of Navarre,
&c.; but it is justly replied, that this proceeded only from his humble
estimate of himself, joined with his indolence. "His considering
himself," says Fontenelle, "inferior to Æsop and Phædrus was only
another instance of his anomalous stupidity." "It is untrue," says La
Harpe, "that La Fontaine invented nothing; he invented his style." The
question could not be placed in a happier and truer light. La Fontaine,
from humility and indolence, took the materials which others had
supplied to his hand; but by his manner of using them, by the magic of
his original and unrivalled style, made them his own. So complete is his
mastery over them, and so entirely is the merit his, that the palpable
difference, in the original, between the genuine tales of Æsop and the
forgeries of the Greek monk Planudes, vanish beneath his touch.
France has produced a host of writers of fables and apologues since his
time, but none worthy of being named with him. England has produced much
fewer fabulists, yet is justly proud of Gay. He had a striking
resemblance to La Fontaine in personal character. Pope's verse, in the
epitaph on him,
"In wit a man, simplicity a child,"
would seem to have been expressly written for La Fontaine. As poets or
fabulists they differ widely and essentially. Gay's fables are the
nearest in merit; but, instead of resemblance, they present the
opposition of wit, satire, and party spirit, in a neat and pointed
style, to La Fontaine's universal and ingenious moral, picturesque
simplicity, and easy graceful negligence.
An anonymous volume of English fables, imitated from La Fontaine,
appeared in 1820. It is attributed to a practised and distinguished
writer both in prose and verse[51]; and might pass for a most successful
version, if the original were not directly and unluckily contrasted with
it in the opposite page. The reader will be more informed by comparing a
short extract from each than by pages of dissertation.
"He! bon jour, monsieur du Corbeau:
Que vous êtes joli! que vous me semblez beau!
Sans mentir, si votre ramage,
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le phœnix des hôtes de ces bois."
"When thus he began: 'Ah! sir Ralph, a good morning:
How charming you look! _how tasteful your dress!_
Those bright glossy plumes, your _fine person adorning_,
_Produce an effect which I cannot express._
_Colours glaring and gaudy were never my choice_;
When I view them _disgust is my only sensation_;
If you join to that plumage a mellow-toned voice,
You're the phœnix, I vow, of the feathered creation.'"
This citation is made, not to censure the English version, but to prove
the unattainable charm of La Fontaine's manner,--that manner or style
which he invented; his close adherence to truth and nature; the art with
which he veils the wildest improbabilities under a probable, consistent,
or humorous air; his power of combining levity of tone with depth of
observation, and the utmost simplicity with the utmost finesse. It is
known that La Fontaine observed the characters, habits, attitudes, and
expression of the brute creation with a view to his fables. Whilst he
endows his brute heroes with speech and thought, one never loses the
image of their kind;--whilst the flatterer gulls his dupe, and even when
he concludes with giving him the moral by way of compensation, one never
loses sight of the fox and raven: but under the touch of the translator,
and indeed of all other fabulists but La Fontaine, they receive the
human form with the human attributes.
La Fontaine's fables are reputed perfect in every sense, poetical and
moral. Two faults are imputed to his tales; the one venial and even
questionable, the other most serious, and past all doubt. His narration,
it is said, is sometimes careless and diffuse. This has offended the
fastidious technical taste of some of his countrymen; but to others his
easy, indolent, copious, rambling effusion is an additional charm. The
second fault of his tales, their licentiousness, is unpardonable. He
imbibed it, most probably, from the perusal and imitation of Rabelais,
Clement Marot, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, and confounded it with their
gaiety. But, in adopting the freedom of their pleasantries, he has
discarded their grossness. His indecorous allusions are conveyed with
infinite finesse and ingenuity of expression, and he must be acquitted
of all intention to corrupt--of the consciousness even of a corrupting
tendency. No inference unfavourable to him is to be drawn from their
condemnation and prohibition at the request of the sorbonne. The sin of
his tales, and that which he was called on to expiate, was not their
immorality, but the liberties which, like his models, he took
occasionally with monks, nuns, and confessors. It is but justice to him
to state his own vindication. He urged the example of the ancients; and
the necessity of a certain tone of gaiety and freedom in familiar tales,
without which they would want their essential grace and charm. "He who
would reduce," says he, "Ariosto and Boccaccio to the modesty of Virgil
would assuredly not be thanked for his pains--(_ne ferait assurément
rien qui vaille_)." An enervating tender melancholy is, he says, much
more injurious. His only object, he protests, was to procure the reader
a passing smile; and, for his part, he could not comprehend how the
reading of his tales should have a bad effect upon others when the
composition had none upon him."
But can it be true, or possible, that this enchanting fabulist was not
merely subject to absences and musings, but the dullest of mortals in
conversation;--his thoughts and expressions alike clumsy and confused?
Two, the most positive testimonies, will suffice, out of many. The
daughter of Racine, who had seen him frequently at her father's table,
described him as "slovenly, stupid, and talking of nothing but Plato."
La Bruyère obviously meant the following character for him:--"A man
appears--clumsy, heavy, stupid. He cannot talk, or even tell what he has
just seen. If he sits down to write, he produces the model of tales. He
endows with speech brutes, trees, stones,--all to which nature has
denied speech; and all is levity, elegance, beauty, nature, in his
works."[52] These testimonies, though so positive, are far from
conclusive. The lady had no taste for Plato, and La Bruyère's style of
portraiture, always overcharged, seems particularly so in this instance,
where his object was contrast and effect. La Fontaine may have fallen
into reveries and solecisms in the company of his friends; he may have
been silent and dull at the table of a financier, where he was among
strangers to be stared at; but his society would not have been sought
and prized, not only by the Molières, Boileaus, and Racines, but by the
Condés, Contis, and Villars, and in the distinguished circles of
mesdames de Bouillon, Mazarin, and La Sablière were the charm of his
writings wholly wanting in his conversation. His writings would have
been admired, and their author neglected, as in the case of Corneille,
were his conversation equally common-place and uninteresting. La
Fontaine probably was dull to those who neither understood nor were
understood by him. He was La Fontaine, the charming fabulist, only when
the subjects and the society interested him; and those around him could,
by mutual intelligence, bring his genius into play. Goldsmith, in the
same manner, was depreciated by persons who did not understand him.
Topham Beauclerk, a man of wit and fashion about town, thought his
conversation absurd and dull; but Edmund Burke found in it the poet and
observer of mankind. The admiration of Horace and Varus, and the society
of Mæcenas and Augustus, did not protect Virgil's simplicity of
character from being sneered at by the court satirists and
_petits-maîtres_ of his time. The well-known description of him by
Horace is not without resemblance to La Fontaine's character.
La Fontaine was buried in the cemetery of St. Joseph, at Paris, by the
side of Molière, who had died many years before. Boileau and Racine
survived him. His best epitaph is the following, written by himself: it
records his character with equal fidelity and humour.
"Jean s'en alla comme il était venu,
Mangant son fonds aprez son revenu,
Croyant le bien chose peu nécessaire.
Quant à son temps bien le sçut dépenser,
Deux parts en fit dont il soluoit passer--
L'une à dormir, et l'autre à ne rien faire."
[Footnote 47: Molière, says Cailhava, in his "Art de la Comédie,"
indignant at the false taste of the court and the public, puts into the
mouth of a courtier, in his "Misanthrope," a sonnet of Cotin, the most
fashionable poet of the day, and a member of the academy. Bad taste was
so accredited with the public, that the audience, on the first night of
performance, applauded this nonsense to the echo, in perfect good faith.
Molière expected and only waited this effect to "pulverise" the sonnet
and its admirers by the relentless and excellent criticism which he puts
into the mouth of his misanthrope, Alceste.]
[Footnote 48: Vie de La Fontaine, par Walknaer.]
[Footnote 49: Champforf.--Éloge de La Fontaine.]
[Footnote 50: The term "bête" as used here, and familiarly in French
conversation is untranslatable into English.]
[Footnote 51: Mr. Croker.]
[Footnote 52: Un homme parait--grossier, lourd, stupide. Il ne sait
pas parler, ni raconter ce qu'il vient de voir. S'il se met à écrire,
c'est le modèle des beaux contes. Il fait parler les animaux, les
arbres, les pierres,--tout ce qui ne parle pas. Ce n'est que
légèreté, que élégance, que beau naturel, dans ses ouvrages.]
PASCAL
1623-1662
Bayle commences his life of Pascal, by declaring him to be one of the
sublimest geniuses that the world ever produced; and every word we read
confirms this judgment. He was as singular as he was great. He is,
perhaps, the only instance of a man born with a natural genius for the
exact sciences, who applied the subtlety and acuteness of his
understanding to religious subjects, combining with close logical
reasoning the utmost elegance and purity of style, and crowning all with
so severe an adherence to what he considered the duties of a Christian
as materially shortened his days. His life reads as one miracle: our
admiration is perpetually excited,--may we own it?--our pity also. It is
hard to say whether this be a just feeling. When we read of the
simplicity and singleness of his character, of his sublime powers of
self-denial, of his charity, his humility, and his patience, we feel
that he as nearly approached his divine Master, as any man on record has
ever done. But when we reflect on divine goodness, on the mission of the
Redeemer, on the blessings with which God has gifted us--we cannot
believe that we are sent here for the mere purpose of mortifying all our
natural inclinations, or of spending our whole thoughts in preparation
for a future life, except as virtue and piety are preparations. Man was
born to be happy through the affections--to enjoy the beauty and harmony
of the visible creation--to find delight in the exercise of his
faculties, and the fulfilment of his social duties; and when to this is
added a spirit of pious resignation, and a wish to be acceptable to
God--we may rest satisfied: this state of mind not being so easy to
attain, and not exaggerate our duties, till life becomes the prison and
burden that Pascal represents it to be. Still it is with reverence that
we venture to criticise a virtue that transcends the common nature of
man. Pascal stands an example of the catholic principles of morality,
and shows the extent to which self-denial can be carried by an upholder
of that faith. Added to this, is the interest we take in the history of
one who, from his birth, gave token of talents of a very uncommon order.
The wonders recorded of his childhood are too well authenticated to
admit of a doubt, while certainly they are not exceeded by any other
prodigy, the achievements of whose premature genius have been handed
down.
The family of Pascal was of Auvergne: it had been ennobled by Louis XI.
in 1478, in the person of a _maître des requêtes_; and, since that
epoch, various members of it had filled distinguished situations in
Auvergne, and were respected for their virtues as much as for their
birth. Étienne Pascal was first president to the court of aids of
Clermont-Ferrand. He married a lady named Antoinette Bégon; of the four
children born to him by her, three survived--two were daughters: the
son, Blaise, was born at Clermont on the 19th of June, 1623. Étienne
was left a widower while his children were yet infants; and from that
time devoted himself to their education.
[Sidenote: 1626.
Ætat.
3.]
The extraordinary and premature talents of Blaise soon displayed
themselves. From the moment he could speak, his repartees excited
admiration, and still more, his eager questionings on the causes of all
things, which displayed acuteness as well as curiosity. His excellent
father, perceiving these early marks of talent, was eager to dedicate
his whole time to his education, so that he resolved to be his only
master in the learned languages and the sciences.
[Sidenote: 1631.
Ætat.
9.]
He accordingly gave up his public situation to his brother, and removed
to Paris. His daughters shared his paternal cares; he taught them Latin,
and caused them to apply themselves to the acquirement of knowledge;
believing that, by inciting them to bestow their attention early on
subjects worthy their inquiry, he should develope their talents, and
give them habits of intellectual industry, which he considered equally
desirable in woman as man. With all this, he had no idea of making a
prodigy of his son, or developing his talents prematurely. On the
contrary, it was his maxim to keep the boy above his work; and he did
not teach him Latin till he was twelve years old. But, while he
refrained from exercising his memory by the routine of lessons, he
enlarged his mind by conversation; and taught him the meaning and aim of
grammar before he placed a grammar in his hands. This was a safe
proceeding with a boy of Pascal's eminent capacity--it had probably
rendered one less gifted indolent and forgetful.